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Sunday, 9 May 2010

Guest: Corrina Rothwell

The work of Corrina Rothwell always makes me stop and smile.If you're a regular Copy+Paste reader you may remember that I featured some of Corrina's work earlier this year here, in one of our 'I'd Like To Copy' posts, where Kirsty and I share the people and things which have been inspiring us.Luckily for us, I don't have to 'copy' Corrina as she's now here in person to share some of her originals with us: Hello! My name is Corrina Rothwell and I'm a Rochdale-born Nottingham-based artist and illustrator. I'm self-taught. Until a year ago I was working with machine embroidery but I grew bored and frustrated with that after 15 years of it. Now I work solely on a graphics tablet, which I adore. My inspiration comes from right under my nose or from inside my head. I'm very lazy, I don't look very far. But I don't have to! There's so much material just in plain old everyday life that is amusing, poignant, entertaining, aggravating and lends itself to pictorial interpretation.

I usually start a new series of work when I have something specific to work towards – very rarely do I draw just 'for the hell of it'. In between drawing spells I collect ideas in the form of either notes or photos on my mobile phone or a few words scribbled in my diary or notebook. I used to be a sketchbook person but not now. I think that's because when things from the 'outside world' inspire me it's usually the words that come to me before the images. I guess what I'm doing these days is illustrating my own words....

I've just done a series of 10 pictures called The Rothwell Chronicles for a one-night event at my friend's gallery in Nottingham. This is the name of my blog – I started this year with a promise to do a picture-a-day on it, but I caved in around the end of February. Anyway the idea was to just do a picture about something, anything that had happened or I had thought about during that day, as a kind of disciplinary exercise. But I don't really like being told what to do, not even by myself. The Rothwell Chronicles is actually a bit redundant as a theme, because really you could put all my work under that umbrella – it's just me chronicling life as I see it. I'll share a few of the Chronicles pictures with you and try to explain how they came about......

1) Beetroot Before Bedtime: This is a kind of follow-on from an embroidery I did called The Beetroot Appreciation Society – I am a huge beetroot fan and basically I got a kick out of making it look like a bloody massacre. So much so that I did this one:

After having a few beers one night I came home and devoured a load of beetroot. I kind of forgot about it, as you do, until I came down in the morming and saw the, er, bloody mess.2) Cashew Queue:

Every time I went in the main Post Office in Nottingham this would tickle me so I thought I'd better make it into a picture. There was the automated voice saying 'cashier number nine' and to me it sounded for all the world like 'cashew'. They've got a different system now, and it sadly no longer sounds nutty.

3) Dogfood – I didn't actually hear anybody saying this, but it really disgusts me that some people have more sympathy for the dog than the person, so this was my sardonic take on it:

4) Pyjamas – this is one of these things that a lot of people probably do but don't really talk about, sticking your coat and boots on over your jimjams to go and get a pint of milk in the morning:

A lot of my pictures are like this actually, capturing those little things that you do, and it's always really nice when people say 'oh my god I do that!' or 'that always happens to me!' like in Mascara Trauma:

I remember when C&P featured Corrina's work earlier in the year and her work featuring cats certainly made this cat owner smile. I love the everyday stories depicted in her pictures, beetroot just genius :)

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Being creative and original doesn't always have to begin with re-invented wheels, clean slates and blank pages.

*COPY*:There's a world of perfectly ingenious mind-stirring quotations, lyrics, conversations, designs, photographs, bits, pieces and miscellaneous bobs out there ... and we like to find them and share them with you.

*PASTE*: Sometimes we take from these 'found' gems and make something satisfyingly new from paper, paint, pixels, fineliners, fabric, fluff, glue, crayon, words ... mime ... OK, maybe not mime. And sometimes we just look at them and take in their fabulousness.

We'd love it if you picked up your creative-tool-of-choice and do some copying and pasting alongside us, and we'd be jsut as happy if you dropped by to read and look at the work of some great artists and creative people.We'd be happier still if you'd bring a friend with you... and some refreshments.